LONG BLOG

Here's some feedback from me, I hope this gets through via comment or blog. I already posted this in a comment on the awards page by the way.

More so than just honoring the right games (in their mind), a team like Destructoid should be consistent in the games they honor. What I mean by this is not looking like you guys changed your minds midway through the GOTY process. It's fine if you guys award a game over the others in a category even if it didn't get the highest "score" from a few months back in the review. People's minds change in retrospect, that's OK.

But take a look at this: Mass Effect 3 is in the GOTY nominations list. This is, unless I'm missing something, the TOP 5 games of the year. Now when I go to the RPG awards, the game isn't even nominated. Even if you count ME3 as a shooter, the game ain't on that nominee list either. I find it hard to say that "Mass Effect 3 is not one of the top 5 best RPGs in 2012, but it's one the 5 best games of the year."

This isn't the only case. Is CoD the best shooter of the year? Or is it Borderlands? Because Borderlands 2 is standing a lot closer to the Walking Dead on that GOTY podium than CoD is. Dishonored isn't the best Action/Adventure game? Fair enough, but it's still 1 of the top 5 games of the year and Sleeping Dogs isn't. Journey wins Best Platformer (already a debatable classification) over Spelunky, but then Spelunky wins best console-exclusive OVER Journey! But wait, Journey is on the GOTY nominee list and Spelunky isn't.

It's normal for games to win independently in certain "attribute" categories like graphics, music, co-op, etc. Halo 4 winning best multiplayer over CoD implies that CoD's single-player and other aspects were good enough to justify being the overall best Shooter. I mean, it's fine if you guys think Journey is the better game than Spelunky. But does Spelunky somehow do a BETTER job at being console exclusive or something? Does the game shout "hey, i'm the best at the wondrous skill that is console-exclusivity, so I deserve this award"?

I understand that being 100% consistent would lead to your GOTY nominee page being a big spoiler for all the rest of your awards results. In 2010, Up was the only animated film nominated for Best Picture when they released the nominees for the academy awards. This was a dead giveaway that Up would win best Animated feature film when awards time came, killing any "suspense" for the audience if there was any. But at least it was consistent.

In order to avoid this "spoiling your own winners" problem, I would suggest releasing the nominees page and then the winners 1 category at a time. Or something. Especially before moving on to broader categories like overall GOTY. Of course, this all hinges on you guys choosing to be consistent. Otherwise, I feel there's absolutely no point in seeing a list of nominees, and the awards are cheapened from your site (which then affects how seriously one takes your opinions). The inconsistencies I mentioned are obviously going to be overshadowed by Walking Dead winning GOTY, a title which didn't break any consistencies in your awards as far as I know. But what if you had a Best Adventure game category and Walking Dead lost to something like Zero Escape, while still winning GOTY? It'd be much more noticeable on the site, but no less inconsistent than what's already here regarding other games.

I know you guys are one of the more fun-loving game sites out there, never too serious...and that's great! But being fun is different from being wishy-washy. Maybe you feel that the year was so damn great, that you can't decide on definitive better games from each other. If that's truly the case then say so, simple! So yeah...just some feedback, something you guys were asking for anyway. I feel consistency is something far more important to work on than expanding technical aspects like video awards or category expansions, etc. This is just coming from a college film and digital media major, so I hope I'm not sounding too snobbish. Otherwise, keep up the great work fellas. I hope the 2013 awards will be better than ever!